CCDE’s behavioral programming includes early intervention services and mental health services, as well as advanced social skills groups and group challenges for Asperger students. This is an individualized program based on your specific child’s developmental level and individual needs. Instruction is designed for mastery of skills versus simple acquisition. The program is norm-referenced and based on the individual level of the child as compared to developmental norms. The child will not be required to complete tasks that they have already mastered or are below their individual developmental level.
Our program promotes generalized outcomes and teaches relevant and functional skills. It teaches the most important skill-setting-stimulus directly, and then promotes generalization in order to change behaviors that have not been taught directly. The program utilizes a combination of people, strategies, and settings when teaching to promote generalization. In the beginning, self-monitoring of behaviors is taught. Children are taught to use visual cues to help manage their own behavior and prepare them for transitions.
Consistent redirection is used for inappropriate behaviors and an established behavior management program is implemented and used consistently. The child is taught appropriate ways to deal with frustration and ways to make needs and wants known. Self-control and self-management are important to the program. These are defined as a personal, systematic application of behavior change strategies that result in desired modification of one’s own behavior. We know that self-control has been established when the target behavior occurs in relative absence of immediate external controls. Our program teaches the child to monitor his or her own behavior using a variety of techniques that include removal from activities until more appropriate behavior occurs to targeting specific activities or objects that are reinforcing to your child and using them to help shape more appropriate behavior.
The behavioral program is set up to target academic behavior as well as social behavior. This helps to teach similar skills in more than one setting. The environmental design is set-up to promote successful engagement with materials and play interactions or social situations. In the beginning, the child’s space is defined using furniture and other visuals (to include photographic pictures and/or icons) to indicate appropriate play in specific areas. Visual schedules are designed based on your child’s individual program and needs to help the child engage appropriately and to help the child transition from one activity to another. This also helps the child know who is coming that day, what to expect during the programming time, and when to expect the session to be over. As the child progresses, visuals are faded and the child works more on self-monitoring. Advanced students, work in social skills groups and team play that requires them to work with others to get to a common goal. Each summer we offer a specific team play camp for Asperger’s students and their typically developing peers. The behavioral program is designed to meet the natural contingencies of reinforcement in the child’s environment. Behaviors that are selected for change should be maintainable by the natural environment. Always keep in mind that the natural environment is variable, and target behaviors must be taught in a variety of settings and with a variety of people in order to ensure that the instruction being taught will also be encountered in other settings.
These strategies all combine to make up a comprehensive program that promotes engagement, generalization, and mastery of skills. This program is not designed to be a complete educational program, but as a PART of the program that includes classroom-based instruction, OT, Speech, etc. As the child is ready, we often include peers into the behavioral program. Peer mediated play is incorporated into our children’s programs as they are ready to work on interactive social play and development. More advanced students work in social skills groups and on group challenges. In this way, we are able to develop an individual program that will serve your child’s needs, no matter where they are on the spectrum. Again, this is individualized and based on the developmental level of your specific child.